The Strain Delivers Horror and Gore

Guillermo Del Toro's Twist on Vampire Legend

Not since the vampire Lestat swaggered onto the pages of Anne Rice's novels have we seen such an entertaining and original take on the vampire genre. If you're looking for vampiric blood lust with a twist, The Strain delivers.

Better known as the director of Oscar Winning Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo Del Toro and author of Prince of Thieves, Chuck Hogan have teamed up to bring you The Strain, a fast paced, action packed tale of vampires and horror. First in a slated trilogy, The Strain is to be followed by The Fall in 2010 and The Night Eternal in 2011.

The Strain is an Action Packed Page Turner

From the opening pages, the reader is gripped with dread. Flight 753 sits stalled on the tarmac at JFK. The plane is filled with passengers, yet oddly its blinds are drawn, its doors are locked, and its comm is silent - dead. Without giving too much away, The Strain chronicles an invasion, of a sort. The invasion of a virus that takes over its victims and turns them into the dead, or rather, the undead.

Del Toro and Hogan are masters at combining scientific speculation with very human tales of fear, desperation and loss. In The Strain, our hero Eph Goodweather, a doctor from the Center for Disease Control, struggles to explain the virus scientifically. He is hampered (of course) by bureaucratic superiors and the master vampire. Eph is joined in his quest to rid the streets of New York from these bloodsucking pests by Nora, coworker and love interest, and Professor Setrakian, a hardened yet lovable survivor of the Holocaust.

Despite a couple cliches -master vampire tries to take over world and a stupid human is willing to sell out his entire species to gain eternal life - The Strain gives us a new race of vampires like nothing we've seen before.

Del Toro Uses Book Trailers to Market Book

In a brilliant bit of marketing, Del Toro has released a series of book trailers promoting The Strain.

The Strain is filled with scenes of apocalyptic destruction, underground chases and bloody battles, but is it worth the read? Yes, it bloody well is.